TOPIC: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

3. Review copy: Gang Rush: Breakout
HOLY SHIT. This is the successor to Thunder Road and it is the king shit. Bits are amazing. Gameplay brisk and fun. Only downside is that the paper money is 0.5" x 0.25" paper chits. It's horrible. Beyond that it's my new fave of 2017. Best when playing with shit talkers...it's that kind of game. If you didn't get Thunder Road this is a great substitute, albeit more complex.

I thought you might like that...folks, I stupidly assigned this to Pete. I probably should have taken it. DOH!

I was coerced into playing Vegas Showdown on paper mats. It was awful. They worked fine, but I spent the entire game in terror that I might spill a drink on them, or bend a corner and the game would be ruined forever. At one point the cat jumped on the table and I damn near panicked that it might throw up on the fragile paper components.

Good game though. They really need to make an edition out of bronze so it will be more durable.

I LOVE this game. I am considering cutting it into 8x11 sections and laminating it.

When our group plays Cthulhu Wars, we tend to negotiate a lot. A lot of discussion on who's wining and who we should be attacking. We play a lot of games this way. That can make the game take quite a bit longer at times and our five player games of CW stretch to 2.5 hours occasionally. Last night we played a five player game in 90 minutes with Cthulhu just wrecking shit (we played with the recent buffs). I was Yellow Sign and doing ok, Opener obliterated one of my spaces which set me back and I was perhaps a turn off from really rolling. I went early Hastur (turn 2) before desecrating a single space and that worked out well for the most part. Racked up a lot of elder signs and came in second.

My friend invited another guy who wasn't a good friend of his but he knew through a local convention. The new guy was cool enough, but what was funny was that halfway through me teaching the game he said my voice was familiar and recognized me through my podcast. Kind of odd and surreal.

Then we played the newest Eric Lang/Faidutti joint Secrets. This is a cold war social deduction-ish game that's kind of a spin on the clever Mascarade. This is a little less memory (although there's still a touch of that), but the ability to swap roles in a game such as this is always interesting to me. I dug it, but didn't love it. Need more plays and with a larger group than 5.

Followed that up with Tiefe Taschen, a German negotiation game that's stellar. This was a total blast. It's a card game that slots in next to I'm the Boss, but I much prefer it. It's almost like a cross between The Resistance and I'm the Boss, if that doesn't sound weird enough. The Resistance influence comes in with how the round is structured and with a president sort of assembling the game state and everyone agreeing on it or not. It's mean, but not quite as dickish and you can't get completely shut out for quite as long. Very clever with lots of twists and double-crosses. Everyone loved it and this will go into the regular rotation.

Ended with a beautiful game of Wiz-War where I was a round short of winning. Lots of stuff thrown down and people getting walled or thorn-bushed in. Lots of fun.

Colonial Twilight- A two player COIN game set during the French-Algerian War. Vanilla COIN in some respects- an insurgent faction and a government faction. Each has unique operations and different victory conditions. Players choose between playing events or conducting an area impulse with units (the scope of which is determined by available resources and the action taken by the player with initiative). It is a pretty good game, but the events are a bit dry. My last game, we probably triggered less than 20% of the events, which makes the game feel more like an operational game than a CDG. That’s the tightrope that COIN walks anyway. Generally, I think it’s up to event cards to evoke the history and conflict. It should be inherent in other mechanics too, but the strength of a card driven game is that every relevant event of the period can be worked in as a special rule, without demanding that players memorize them prior to play. The iniative/action selection key is probably the most impressive part of the design- such a great adaptation of COIN for two players.

Chaos in the Old World- I’ve only played three 5-player games of Chaos and Horned Rat has won all of them. I played Khorne. The sum of my turns would barely scratch 15 minutes in what was probably 2 ½ hours. I’m sure that I’m in the minority, but I’ve never had a memorable game of it. I like the chaos cards played into spaces, because they give the factions a unique feel, but the dials and upgrades are just a jumble of information that is public, but hidden from plain view arbitrarily. I don’t’ really care about the theme, so I’m probably not the intended audience anyhow.

Maria- My favorite game! We had an excellent session last night. I was Austria, and despite an opening hand that only let me defend two areas on the board adequately, we managed to last until Turn 10. Austria came close, but France ran away with a late victory in the Netherlands. Two turns earlier, he was lamenting that the game was essentially over. Maria does seem to be the rare game where everyone feels like they’re losing simultaneously for long stretches.

Chaos in the Old World- I’ve only played three 5-player games of Chaos and Horned Rat has won all of them. I played Khorne. The sum of my turns would barely scratch 15 minutes in what was probably 2 ½ hours. I’m sure that I’m in the minority, but I’ve never had a memorable game of it. I like the chaos cards played into spaces, because they give the factions a unique feel, but the dials and upgrades are just a jumble of information that is public, but hidden from plain view arbitrarily. I don’t’ really care about the theme, so I’m probably not the intended audience anyhow. [/q]

I printed out some reference sheets with the dial rewards listed. I think visible tracks would have been much better but FFG never saw a game they didn't want to put a dial on.

I had a 4 hour game of Terraforming Mars. Needless to say that's way, way, way, longer than it should ever be. I also made a serious mistake while setting up the game and other players ganged on me so the experience was kind of miserable. I also don't recommend the game with 5 but that's what we had.

The mistake was giving the newbies Beginner Corporations AND the +1 production bonus while I and the other guy who had played before played as normal. The first is fine but the second one proved to be an insumournable advantage. The issue was not so much that the size of the advantage was too much (I twas, +6 credits plus energy, plants and heat is too much) but that it let them buy all the good cards (Asteroids, Big events, science) regardless of it fitting their strategy or not.

I was also hit with a -2 income production on turn 2. I was Phoblog which starts with a mere 23 credits so, let me tell you, losing 2 credits per turn hurts. Still, I think it's a pretty bad Corp. It starts with a small pile of Titanium and it gets more money out of it than a normal Corp would but, once you run the numbers, it's not significantly better at playing Space events than another Corp would. I mean, it only has 3 credits more than Terracor. Is it really better? Can't say but I'm not sold on it.

Still, the guys I played with seem great and might hang out to play with them again in the future.

I hate ironing shirts, but my current job requires full suit and tie five days a week, so every other week I am ironing 10 shirts. To keep it from being too tedious, I sometimes set up a solitaire game and alternate between ironing a shirt and playing a couple of turns of the game. Yesterday, it was Escape from 100 Million BC, running the botanist, the paleontologist, and the soldier. I set the game for White Knuckle difficulty, which is the second hardest setting.

Having played a few times, I see that the game has a nice narrative arc. The early game is slow-paced exploration, and the shortage of equipment tends to mean a lot of running away from dinosaurs. And since the map isn't well-explored yet, the dinosaurs are more likely to chase you than wander off in a different direction. Mid-game, the characters tend to have decent gear and there are at least a couple of known threats wandering around near the center of the board. The end game feels more dramatic, as the paradox track is getting red and players are rapidly traveling through explored spaces to get to and from distant parts of the map.

The botanist ended up being the most valuable character. His high will was key to winning over several suspicious castaways. The soldier had a tough game, getting crushed three times and constantly running out of will. Finally, we had the time machine assembled and had sent back every castaway except for Amelia Earhart. There were only two item cards that hadn't been drawn yet and we could afford to take six more points of paradox and still get safely back to the future. So we go, and flip those last two item cards: some random item that cost three paradox and those damned snack cakes for another three! It seems like it's always the snack cakes at the bottom of the item draw pile. So we barely make it back to the future, only to find that sentient dinosaurs rule the world. They put us in the zoo.

Game 1 was on the standard map, with the owner of the game using Tcho Tcho for the first time. Cthulhu and the Black Goat were used, and I took Yellow Sign since it had been a long time since I had tried them. Tcho Tcho looked like they had an early lead, but then Black Goat pulled ahead and seemed like the winner. I made several errors, and Cthulhu wasn't playing to his utmost, either. I kept trying to get around the board to complete my spell book, while everyone else was done. The two leaders kept doing Rituals of Annihilation, which just served to raise the power of Tcho Tcho. The game ended with a Tcho Tcho victory by 3 points, just as I was about to complete my spell book.

Game 2 was our first time playing on the Library map. I took my old standby, Black Goat. Tcho Tcho was put aside and we used all of the base factions. The board is confusing, and the spaces are too small to accommodate the coming clashes. The addition of the Librarian and Custodian are... well at least for us they seemed a mere annoyance and perhaps not worth the additional rules. No one even called anyone out for an overdue spell book, which was good for me, since I was the one who would have gotten punished.

It seems to me that the primary change this map brings is increased mobility, which GREATLY assisted the Yellow Sign, controlled by the game's owner. He lagged in Doom points for the entire game, and then started descrating all over the place, and racked up 15 elder sign tokens over the course of the game. The problem was, Cthulhu was the early leader and was really crushing it, so Yellow Sign beat him up, and I dog-piled on; At that point, it looked like I was the clear winner... only to have Yellow Sign snatch the victory from me at the last minute with all of his elder signs. Had I been paying more attention to him, I might have been able to keep him in check, but then it probably would have gone to Cthulhu. I'm not sure.

Black Goat is still my favorite, and my best moment was when I didn't have much on the board, really, and then paid a mere 7 power to bring out literally every monster I had in reserve. This game kicks ass.

Traded away some games and one of the things I got in return was Struggle for the Galactic Empire by Decision Games.

Played about a half a game so far and I'm fairly impressed. The game looks good and the chits are high quality. The CRT sheet was a bit flimsy for something that is constantly being referenced but nothing that a handy page protector couldn't remedy.

As to game play, it follows the standard formula of new threats emerging each turn that must be prioritized and dealt with but they put some actual thought and heart into some of the things that can come up. For example there is "The Mutant" event where a creature with strong mental abilities can appear on the board and try to take over the empire. A clear homage to "The Mule" from the Foundation. There is also "The Messiah" which references Dune. The kind of things that help kick the game up a notch to where you feel like you are trying to hold your empire together rather than just dealing with generic threats.

It also has some other cool things going on. A bit of "science expeditions" that cost resources and units but could get you some nifty boost or might just destroy everybody you sent on the adventure. A system to win hearts and minds by spreading the good word of the Empire and one to wage a terror campaign to keep upstart systems in line through fear.

I picked up a $13 copy of Citadels while on vacation, at the descendant of the same shop where I saw Lord of the Fries in 2005 and returned to gaming at the age of 38. I used my phone to read the F:ATty reviews before repurchasing it. We played Lord of the Fries and my wife got upset because I excluded the four-year-old and one-year-old daughters. My oldest son was eight and his brother was five.

So my now-seventeen-year-old insisted we play tonight, and all five of us played. Nobody fought or got upset. Everyone had a good time. We drew on our knowledge of each other to try and anticipate moves and role selection. My wife is my age-ish, my kids still at home are 17, 16 and 13. It's a good mix of ages and I will have them for a few years before they (presumably) leave for college. My drifter son who is 20 will be in town soon, taking a break from his part-time warehouse job and hip hop career. Most of our recent gaming (Scum, Thunder Road, Tales of the Arabian Nights) has been pretty enjoyable. It only took 12 years to come together. I don't play anything too heavy and my wife and I have both calmed down a little.

My daughter invited a few of her gang over, and they decided to play One Night Ultimate Werewolf. I found out that a) those kids are a lying sack of snakes, and b) I absolutely suck at that game. They loved it, and I had more fun watching them play than I did playing.

In between some sessions of Werewolf, a couple of them wanted to play Coup. I also suck at that, but did manage to win a game.